1 . As a botanists who studies our cultural relationship with plants, I am forever fascinated with what draws people to gardening.

Admittedly, connecting with the natural world might seem like an obvious motivation, and undoubtedly it is a key part of the attraction.    1     If they were, we’d abandon any attempts at design, planting or care and watch how walls of weeds slowly gave way to the mass of bushes. But that wouldn’t be gardening, of course, because for all their diversity, the one thing that all gardens have in common is how unnatural they are.    2     Dazzling plants, watch features and glorious blooms is all interconnected well beyond what would naturally occur. Whether it is green lawns created in the driest deserts or a tropical paradise on a stormy North Atlantic island, they are all about shaping the natural world to fit our idea of what it “ should” be.

As I work on my tiny terrariums (玻璃花园) on dark February nights, something magical happens to my brain.     3     In a world that has become increasingly uncertain, people are often fuelled by the same psychological desire: the instinctive need to have a bit of control amid chaos.

As our world becomes more and more unpredictable and often frightening, gardening seems to be able to appeal to and reach out to a whole new generation, often against all odds.

Of course, gardening in’ t the only thing people turn to. The rise of culture conflicts and fix at ion on body image have also been widely documented as being driven by a psychological need to feel a degree of certainty, control and safety. However, I can’t help but think of these alternatives:     4    

A plan to restore green spaces

The UK government has revealed a plan to protect and restore England’s wild life. It focuses on at-risk species by making canals, rivers and streams cleaner and expanding green spaces.

The new Environmental Improvement Plan sets goals to create or restore more than 5,000 square kilometres of wildlife habitats across England and restore 400 miles of rivers. It will create or expand 25 national nature reserves. New woodland will also be planted alongside rivers. At the moment, access to green spaces is not equal across the UK. Around 4% of people live more than 10 minutes away from their nearest park. The Environmental Improvement Plan aims to make sure households in England are within a 15-minute walk to a green space.

As well as helping more people to act close to nature, the plan should increase England’s biodiversity. A species Survival Fund will be set up to help some of England’s most endangered animals, such as red squirrels (松鼠) and watch rats. The Government has set targets to boost these species by 2030. There are also targets to reduce food waste, glass, metal, paper and plastic by 2028, and to improve the quality of water in rivers.

New rules mean that the Government will have to consider the environmental effects of any policy it puts forward. These goals are part of a 25- year plan that was launched in 2018. The aim of the plan is to improve the environment “within a generation ” which is roughly 25 years.

Although lots of people have welcomed the plan, not everyone is impressed. Pail de Zylva, from the charity Friends of the Earth, said it wasn’t clear enough how the goals would be met and that many of them were like promises the Government had already made but not yet delivered.

The problem of electronic waste

We have gradually come to realise that in two ways in particular, modern hi-tech can be bad for the planet. The first is its energy use; the worldwide scale of information technology is so enormous that electronics now produce fully two percent of global carbon emissions, which is about the same as the highly controversial emissions of aeroplanes. The other is the hardware, when it comes to the end of its natural life. This, increasingly, is pretty short. We have hardly noticed this important stream of waste, so much so that a Greenpeace report on the untraced and unreported e-waste two years ago referred to it as “the hidden flow”. We need to be aware of it.

The latest United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report estimates that worldwide, electronic waste is mounting by about 40 million tons a year. So what can we do about it?

The European Union has recognised the problem by adopting a key principle: producer responsibility. In other words, making it the duty of manufacturers of electronic goods to ensure their safe disposal at the end of their lives. In practice, an EU regulation now means that electronics dealers must either take back the equipment they sold you, or help to finance a network of drop-off points, such as public recycling sites. Its main feature is quite ambitious: it aims to deal with “everything with a plug”.

The new UN report suggests that all countries could do something about the problem with a change in design. Groups such as Greenpeace have led the way in putting pressure on major manufacturing companies to find substitutes for the toxic chemicals inside their products. Encouragingly, they have had some success in forcing them to develop non-poisonous alternatives to these. This may be the real way forward.

Wildlife Report Calls for Action

The World Wide Fund for Nature released its Living Planet Report, which found that the Earth’s wildlife populations have fallen by 69% in the past 50 years.

The report is produced every two years to show how the natural world is changing, so governments, businesses, and conservationists understand     1     needs to be done to protect the Earth. The team looks at several factors. One is the Living Planet Index (LPI),     2     examines how wildlife populations have changed over time. A total of 5, 268 species across the world have been tracked, including birds, fish, insects, and mammals.

The change in wildlife varies around the world. South America and the Caribbean are the most affected. In these areas, the average wildlife populations have dropped by 94% over 50 years. Central Asia and Europe have     3     (small) decline, with an 18% drop. The WWF says the changes are caused by human activity. One of the biggest threats     4     (face) wildlife is a number of acres of forest that are being chopped down     5     that theland can be used for farming instead. To find the best way to protect animals worldwide, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is studying how easy or hard     6     will be to help different species. It has so far found that the populations of several animals, including the pink pigeon and the Sumatran rhino,     7     be boosted.

While some news from the Living Planet Report is worrisome, there is good news, too. Up to now the numbers of many species     8     (rise) around the world because of people’s efforts to protect them. In India, the number of tigers has nearly doubled since 2009. And in 2020,   there were more than 50 sightings of the critically     9     (endanger) Antarctic blue whale.

In the US, conservation efforts in recent decades have helped to save several species, including the bald eagle, which     10     (remove) from the threatened species list in 2007.

6 . Chemists in mid-1500s Nuremburg had discovered that bird droppings were a rich source of saltpetre, a vital ingredient in the making of gunpowder. As a consequence pigeon droppings used to be almost as valuable as silver. Understandably, by the middle of the following century, there were an estimated 26,000 pigeon houses in Britain.

The practice of keeping the pigeon was introduced to Britain by the Romans. The Normans kept pigeons in specially constructed niches in castles and courtyards. When the pigeon houses in Britain were built, they were a vital source of meat and feathers. The latter were particularly prized as a source of warmth. Droppings gathered from the pigeon houses was a rich fertilizer, too.

The pigeon house was not only a source of food and revenue in medieval times, but also a status symbol. The privilege of building or owning pigeon houses was reserved for the rich. Towards the end of her rule, Queen Elizabeth I decided to open pigeon-breeding to the free market. Then, pigeon houses sprang up all over the countryside.

The number of pigeon houses across the British countryside was not universally welcomed. Each day the birds flew off to feed themselves on other people’s crops. By the middle of the 17th century, the problem of pigeons was so great that people feared that the destructive pigeons would turn England into a desert.

Luckily, an agricultural revolutionary, Charles Townsend, had introduced the turnip to Britain around 1700, keeping farm livestock fat enough to eat through the dark winter months. Later, vast quantities of natural saltpetre were discovered in Chile and California. Keeping pigeons went out of fashion.

Now, the homeless pigeons flew off to find somewhere else to live. One species discovered that Britain’s rapidly growing towns and cities were full of the sort of rock-faces they liked to rest on—humans called them “buildings”. Over time they’d become the wild urban pigeon that we know today.

7 . French adventurer-scientist Roland Bourdeix has a grand vision for how to preserve a thousand or more genetic varieties of coconut trees. Imagine, as he does, turning dozens or hundreds of remote Pacific islands into coconut sanctuaries. Each island would contain just a few varieties of these trees.

But why? Are coconut trees, the source of oil and newly trendy coconut water, somehow in danger?

Not exactly. At least not for now. There are plenty of coconut palms all over the tropics, and coconut production has been slowly growing. But that masks a potential long-term problem, says Stephan Weise, Deputy Director General for Research at Bioversity International in Rome. Most coconut production comes from a small part of the coconut’s gene pool (基因库). Producers rely on a handful of high-producing varieties or hybrids (杂交品种). Those commercial varieties are slowly overwhelming (压倒)traditional varieties that people in the tropics have grown thousands of years. Those are the storehouse of the coconut’s genetic diversity: All of the colors, shapes, tastes, and survival tools that this species possesses — and may need again someday.

Conserving (保护)such diversity in agricultural crops is a familiar problem, but the situation with coconuts is a little bit different, Weise says.

First of all, scientists can’t yet preserve a particular kind of coconuts in refrigerated “gene banks,” as they do with standard seeds. They can’t dry, freeze, and preserve coconuts for decades. Instead, coconuts have to be preserved as living trees, growing outside.

This leads to the second problem. Coconut varieties growing in the open air often won’t reproduce themselves successfully. Their flowers pick up pollen (花粉)from other trees nearby, which often turn out to be commercial varieties or hybrids. And when that happens, some genes may be lost altogether.

So what’s the secret to preserving these coconuts? For starters, scientists have set up a dozen open-air coconut gene banks. They’re reproducing each variety through careful hand-pollination of the trees. But Weise says that’s expensive and labor-intensive.

This brings us back to Roland Bourdeix’s crazy-sounding idea. The key to preserving coconut biodiversity more cheaply, he thinks, is isolation. And there’s no more isolated place than a lonely Pacific island. Just convince people on one of these islands to plant coconut trees from a single variety, and the problem is practically solved. He’s found several islands where the inhabitants are willing to help turn his vision into reality. One of them is well-known already: The Tetiaroa Atoll in French Polynesia, an idyllic retreat once owned by Marlon Brando.

The illegal ivory trade (象牙贸易) has been a major problem in Africa for decades. Poachers (偷猎者) and hunters have killed hundreds of thousands of elephants to obtain this precious material. Now the areas in which they do it are taking action. The International Union for Conservation (保护) of Nature (IUCN) announced on Dec 3 that key states     1     poaching takes place have made a promise to stop the ivory trade and protect Africa’s elephants.

Recently, top officials and experts from 30 states met to discuss how to protect Africa elephants. The conference,     2     (organize) by the IUCN and the government of Botswana, was held in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital city.

In     3    1980s, as many as 1 million elephants across Africa were killed for ivory. The ivory     4     (use) to make jewelry and other items. This continued until 1989,     5     the convention (大会) on International Trade in Species voted to ban all trade in ivory. Then, elephants’ population slowly began to increase.

According to the IUCN, 2011 saw the highest levels of poaching and illegal ivory trading in at least 16 years. Around 25,000 elephants were killed in Africa that year. “With an estimated 22,000 elephants illegally     6     (kill) in 2012, we continue to face a critical situation,” said John E. Scanlon, CITES Secretary- General.

At the meeting, key Africa states where elephants make     7     home agreed to develop a “zero-tolerance approach” to poaching. The deal calls for tough sentences for poachers and hunters, and increased cooperation between states where poaching and hunting is a big problem. All participants at the conference agreed to sign the deal. With these states     8     (come) together, there may be hope for elephants.